There’s finally a reason to be interested in zombie games again.

For that, we need to thank Dean Hall, the creator of DayZ, a new mod that is taking the internet gaming community by storm.

DayZ is a mod for a military shooter called ArmA II. If you haven’t heard of ArmA, you’ll probably be shocked that the game was #1 on Steam‘s sales chart yesterday. That’s right: this mod is so popular that it has been grabbing PC gamer’s attention on the same week that Diablo III launched.

The reason? DayZ is a no holds barred zombie apocalypse simulation with only one objective: survive.

While zombie-themed video games have been extremely popular over the past few years, such as Left 4 Dead and Dead Island, DayZ stands apart from the rest due to its extreme difficulty and realistic approach to zombie survival.

Equipped with only a pistol, flares, painkillers, beans and a canteen, players have to wander through DayZ‘s ridiculously large map in order to stumble upon more food, equipment and weapons.

If killing zombies is what you’re into, you’ll be happy to know that each game has a ton of the living dead crawling over the map. Exactly how many? Hall and the DayZ team won’t specify, but in the latest patch notes they had this to say: “Re: Zombie Numbers…. hahah… you’re all f*****. deeply f*****. Good luck.”

Zombies aren’t the only things to look out for in DayZ; the game also demands you keep an eye on the other 49 players trying to survive alongside you. Additional players aren’t always what they seem: with DayZ‘s permadeath structure, other players can take you out in order to steal your stuff. Of course, the best method of zombie survival is probably to stick together, but the ability to kill your human brethren adds a level of morality to DayZ that has not before been seen in the zombie genre.

In order to play, you must have a copy of ArmA II as well the “Operation Arrowhead” expansion. Once installed, check out Something Awful for what seems to be the most popular DayZ set-up guide.

Oh, and good luck. I guarantee you’re going to need it.

It’s bad enough when game companies are hacked by outside parties.

But hacking your own employees’ computers?

That’s a scenario that Activision CEO Bobby Kotick apparently endorsed in 2009, tasking the company’s IT director to access the computers and voice mail of Infinity Ward chiefs Jason West and Vince Zampella before the pair bolted for EA — to “dig up dirt” and “not get caught” doing it.

Former Activision IT Director Thomas Fenady believes the plans, which included staging a mock fire drill, were only discussed and never carried out — but it wasn’t for lack of trying. Lawyers for West and Zampella state that the scheme, codenamed Project Icebreaker, was rejected not only by the IT director, but by Microsoft and independent security firm InGuardians, due to the legal murkiness of the request.

Activision and EA have settled out of court, but West and Zampella’s separate case will go to trial on May 29.

Spying on your own employees? Maybe EA will have some competition for “Worst Company In America” voting next year.

When it comes to World of Warcraft one of the most popular topic of conversations is whether or not it’s losing players.  It seems that almost every other day someone is saying “It’s down.”, “It’s up.”, “It’s steady”.

And then come the speculations about why players are leaving if they’re actually leaving. Where are they going to?

Well, we may finally have some answers.

NetEase  — the company that operates World of Warcraft in China — have recently released their first quarter report for 2012.  And, while it seems that they are doing very well over-all they have seen some decline where WoW is concerned.

According to their report, the company’s self-developed games are growing in popularity and driving revenue.

According to an article in Gamasutra, NetEase has actually seen an increase in revenue to $289.2 million  from from $221.3 million last year.

However, NetEase has said that the growth was offset somewhat by a revenue decline from World of Warcraft.

It’s not all bad news for WoW, though.  NetEase did renew their contract with Blizzard for at least the next three years and have said they are pleased with the decision.

Do you love Borderlands? Do your palms get sweaty when you think about the upcoming sequel?

Then you’re exactly who Gearbox is targeting with the “Ultimate Loot Chest Borderlands 2 Limited Edition.”

Picture courtesy of Joystiq

For the mere price of $150, you can get a plethora of goodies packed inside a replica Borderlands loot chest. Inside is:

• a copy of Borderlands 2 with a steelbook case
• a comic book download
• a creatures of Pandora ID chart
• a certificate of authenticity
• a Marcus Kincaid bobblehead
• four stickers
• a cloth map
• four lithograph postcards
• field notes from Sir Hammerlock
• a hardbound book titled “Inside the Vault”
• to-be-announced Borderlands 2 DLC

For the slightly more frugal, Gearbox is also offering the “Deluxe Vault Hunters Collector’s Edition” for $100. While you don’t get the sweet loot chest for packaging, you do get the comic, bobblehead, stickers, art book, DLC, and a copy of the game.

What do you think? Are these bonuses worth the extra money?

Borderlands 2 is due out on September 18 in North America and September 21 internationally. It will be available for PC, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.

What’s in a name?

For MMO players, lots.

That’s why ArenaNet is making it super-easy to reserve your Guild Wars character name(s) in Guild Wars 2.

As outlined in a blog post, ArenaNet will build a list of Guild Wars names from all active accounts, with “active” defined as having logged in to the game at any point in 2012 until the list is constructed.

Then, players need to simply log into the game and create character(s) with the desired name(s) either during the Headstart Access period or on Launch Day.

After launch, the remainder of the 20 million unclaimed names will be “freed up,” allowing anyone to use them.

So are you planning to re-use your Guild Wars character names in Guild Wars 2? Or were you going to go with something original, maybe even — gasp! — one word? Let us know in the comments below!

NOTE: This information supersedes all previous info that indicated that Guild Wars players would have their Guild Wars 2 names reserved solely via linking their accounts or through the Hall of Monuments. The only way to reserve a character name is to have your GW/GW2 accounts linked, log into GW before the list is created, and then use the desired name(s) during Headstart or on Launch Day.

Most of you will probably remember a little demon that plagued your Monday night Diablo 3 launch experience named “Error 37.”  Our own Gary Gannon, Mike Schaffnit and Mike B. do.  They had to wait about two hours to log into D3 for the live Gameplay stream.

Well, Blizzard wants you to know they feel pretty bad about it.  They’ve released a statement saying that “despite very aggressive projections” they did not go far enough in preparing for the game.  They have also stated that they will continue to monitor performance and take measures as needed to “ensure a positive experience for everyone.”

Unfortunately, in order to do that they have also moved the release of the real-money auction house back.  They haven’t set a date for it, but they want to make sure everything runs properly before adding that in.

Blizzard finished by saying: “We sincerely regret that your crusade to bring down the Lord of Terror was thwarted not by mobs or demons, but by mortal infrastructure.”

Dust off your PlayStation 3 controllers — it’s nearly time for you to get your hands on DUST 514.

CCP Games is now accepting closed beta applications for its PS3 shooter title set in the EVE Online universe. EVE players and Fanfest attendees will get first crack at the beta — some as early as tomorrow — with the beta expanding as the summer goes on.

A “special event” is also planned for players who get in this weekend. If you’re playing, we’d suggest keeping an eye toward the sky — you never know when an “orbital surprise” could be headed your way.

DUST 514 is set to release later this year exclusively on PlayStation 3. A direct link to the beta application can be found here.

A group of four players from Korea have completed Diablo III in as little as seven hours!

Sanctuary was a place for heroes to converge and experience countless hours of battles in fighting evil to make up for the years we have missed out.

The speed runners are always there when new games launch, first to 85 was claimed by Athene For Science in World Of Warcraft.

Don’t take this and begin the rage of “Seven hours is not acceptable! I need more content!” The players completed this on the velcro mode and D3 has so many more levels of difficulty, so do not be disheartened by this as Nightmare mode is going to hog a hell of a lot more time.

How long did it take for you to complete Diablo III and did you run it originally on Normal mode?

The latest Champion Sneak Peek is once again upon us!

Darius, The Hand of Noxus.

It seems this latest champion is Garen’s younger brother that is also a theif that stole Sions axe a few years back.

Ok I’m making that up but at first glance it seems that Riot is taking a few features of other champions, throwing them into a blender and HEY-HO we have ourselves a new champion.

At first glance it seems we are getting another melee AD champion similar to the heavier Tryndamere rather than the lighter Fiora, but we could be tossed a curve ball and receive a melee AP champion comparable to Mordekaiser or Fizz. This is because, I don’t believe Riot would release a third AD champion in secession to Hecarim and Varus. 

I am not highly excited for this champion unless he has some ground breaking abilities in his pocket. The feel of the heavier AD champions aren’t that fun to play — for me personally — the abilities around them usually have the feeling of “How do I deal more damage today?” and unless he has some ground breaking abilities I wont be picking him up.

But what do you think, will he be an interesting champion or will you decide not to pick up the “Blender Champion”

Fans of pretty, shiny things rejoice. Because En Masse Entertainment has launched an online store for TERA.  The store is designed to cater to the cosmetic needs of TERA players such as appearance changes and offers what they refer to as “premium services” and “novelty items”.

Premium  services are essentially the standard post-character creation “oops I messed up” vouchers.  They include appearance, gender, race and name change vouchers and vary slightly in price.  Appearance and name change vouchers come in at $10 a pop while gender changes cost $15 and race changes will cost $24.

For those looking for the full package the race change offers not only that but also a change of appearance and gender (barring races that are single gender).

Novelty items are custom weapon skins and consist of “sets” that will change out periodically to give players a variety to chose from.  Only one set will be in the store at at time and then they will be removed for a while to be replaced by a new set.  These will cost $10 each.

I took a peek at the sets they have right now, and have to say the warrior and lancer sets are pretty nice looking.